"The social system of private property and limited government is the only system that tends to debarbarize all those who have the innate capacity to acquire personal culture."
~Ludwig von Mises

May 2, 2008

Lew Rockwell on the libertarian movement

Anyone involved in the "movement" knows that we have two great problems today as libertarians, one old and one rather new. The first problem is the state, and it dwarfs all others.

The second problem is that the libertarian movement today is dominated by a kind of opinion cartel. If you read the sites and publications from the well-funded outfits, the movement comes across like an echo chamber. The prose is toothless and the analytics very thin. You only need to know this: they have not only failed to support the Ron Paul movement; they organized to smash it using smears and invective. These people decided long ago that if they can't control the movement, they would kill it. Recently they have taken the latter course.

This is the reason that libertarianism can’t really be called a movement, and it's a good thing too. One man tried to buy it, control it, and turn it towards anti-intellectualism for a political purpose. If you think of one thing that libertarians are not, it is subservient. So the ideas march onward, delightfully free of manipulation by elites.